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Fund managers including Schroders, Amundi and Legal & General Investment Management have lined up behind the Church of England's attempt to get ExxonMobil to tell its shareholders more about its climate-change exposure.

Investor pressure is mounting on oil companies

The Church Commissioners, the body that manages the Church's £6.7 billion investment fund, has been trying to get the largest US oil company to publish more about its CO2 emissions since January, when it announced plans to file its first-ever shareholder resolution in the US, with that objective.

It is involved with a group of US investors, led by the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which together hold about 0.26% of ExxonMobil's share capital. On April 12, the Church said that "more than 30" further institutional investors had declared they will vote for the resolution at ExxonMobil's general shareholder meeting on May 25.

Further support for the ExxonMobil resolution sets the scene for a public showdown between shareholders and "Big Oil", at a time when oil companies are under pressure from low oil prices.

Exxon's share price is down about 20% from its peak of $103.83 in June 2014, to $83.35 as of April 11. UK oil major BP's shares are down 32% from their July 2014 peak of 519.2p to 351.45p as of April 12.

In that context, BP has come under pressure from UK shareholder groups over pay. On April 11, ShareSoc, an organisation representing individual retail shareholders, recommended a vote against BP's executive pay packets at its meeting on April 14.

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ShareSoc said chief executive Bob Dudley's $20 million pay packet was "simply too high, particularly in a year when the company suffered a record loss of $6.4 billion".

BP said in a statement that "despite the very challenging environment" the company's management team had "surpassed the board's expectations" by "responding early and decisively to the steep fall in the oil price". It also added that the way it pays its executives had been approved by shareholders with a 96% vote in 2014.

BP and its European rival Shell have both been co-operative on the climate-change issue. Both firms agreed to publish analysis of the effect of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius after shareholders, including the Church Commissioners, voted 98% in favour of similar resolutions at their AGMs in 2015.

By contrast, in February, ExxonMobil decided to combat the climate resolution. US law allows companies to prevent proposals from being presented to their annual shareholder meetings, if they can convince the US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, of their arguments.

ExxonMobil argued the climate-change resolution was both unnecessary – since the company's disclosures are already sufficient – and that the investors' demands for more information were too vague.

On March 22, the SEC rejected Exxon's argument. The regulator said: "We are unable to conclude that the proposal is so inherently vague or indefinite that neither the shareholders voting on the proposal, nor the company in implementing the proposal, would be able to determine with any reasonable certainty exactly what actions or measures the proposal requires.

"It does not appear that ExxonMobil’s public disclosures compare favourably with the guidelines of the proposal. Accordingly, we do not believe that ExxonMobil may omit the proposal from its proxy materials."

Edward Mason, head of responsible investment for the Church Commissioners, said in a statement: "We are delighted with the scale of support this resolution has received so far. The resolution is part of a much wider trend following the Paris Agreement for investors to ask companies to improve disclosure on how they are positioned for the risks and opportunities posed by climate change."